Ghana's rental sector operates under a legal framework designed to protect both landlords and tenants, but weak enforcement has allowed the market to
Ghana’s rental sector operates under a legal framework designed to protect both landlords and tenants, but weak enforcement has allowed the market to descend into what critics describe as near-total lawlessness, with landlords routinely violating tax obligations and advance payment limits while regulators look on.
Acting Rent Commissioner Frederick Opoku says landlords are required by law to pay between 8 and 15 per cent tax on their rental income, 8 per cent for residential properties and 15 per cent for commercial ones, under an arrangement the Rent Control Department is meant to police jointly with the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA). Yet, he says, enforcement by the GRA has been virtually non-existent, allowing landlords across the country to collect rental income year after year without remitting the taxes due.
“Landlords are supposed to pay between 8% and 15% in rent taxes, yet there is virtually no enforcement by the Ghana Revenue Authority”, Mr Frederick Opoku, the Rent Commissioner, said
The tax shortfall is only one strand of a wider culture of non-compliance. Under Section 20 of the Rents Act, as amended, landlords are barred from collecting more than six months’ rent in advance from a tenant.
In practice, however, prospective tenants across Accra, Kumasi and other cities are routinely told to pay one, two or even three years upfront before they can move in – a demand Mr Opoku has repeatedly described as both illegal and an “unconscionable burden” on ordinary Ghanaians.
“Rent advance exceeding six months is a crime, and we will come for you,” he has warned landlords.
The commissioner attributes the disorder partly to widespread ignorance of the law and partly to the absence of consequences for breaking it.
He disclosed that about 60 per cent of tenants in the country have no formal tenancy agreement with their landlords, a legal requirement that leaves both parties without protection when disputes arise, and one he says tenants are equally liable for failing to demand.
In response, the Rent Control Department has begun rolling out a mandatory Rent Card system, tenancy registration drives and a uniformed, multi-agency task force comprising Rent Control officials working alongside the Police, GRA and Immigration Service to inspect properties, register tenancy agreements and crack down on illegal advance payments.
The department says it is also pushing the Judicial Service to establish specialised rent courts to fast-track prosecutions, arguing that ordinary courts have been too slow to deter offenders.
Still, Opoku has publicly appealed for greater cooperation from sister agencies, including the Ghana Police Service and the GRA, disclosing that letters seeking collaboration have gone unanswered for months.
Without that support, he says, the Rent Control Department alone cannot compel compliance across a rental market as vast and fragmented as Ghana’s.
For now, the gap between what the law promises and what tenants experience remains wide: favourable statutes exist on paper for landlords, tenants and the state alike, but as long as enforcement lags, landlords continue to set the terms, leaving tenants to either pay up or be shut out of housing altogether.
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